Historical Upper Ocean Temperature Profiles from LANSING Cruise

Temperature-depth profile pairs from the LANSING cruise in the North Pacific Ocean, collected from May 7 to May 19, 1964. Data is processed into the NODC standard C128 format, with temperature recorded at uniform 5-meter intervals down to a maximum depth of approximately 285 meters. The dataset is provided by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Use Cases

• Analyzing the thermal structure of the upper ocean using temperature-depth value pairs.
• Studying historical ocean conditions in the North Pacific using cruise date, position, and time metadata.
• Calibrating or validating models of upper ocean heat content for a specific time period.

Strengths

• Data is processed to a known standard format (NODC C128), ensuring structural consistency.
• Provides a focused 13-day time series from a single cruise for temporal analysis.
• Temperature measurements are recorded at a consistent 5-meter depth interval.

Limitations

• Key metadata such as row count, column names, and file size are unavailable from all sources.
• Data is limited to the upper 285 meters of the ocean, excluding deeper thermal structure.
• The most recent update date (2026-04-01) conflicts with the data's age (1964), suggesting a metadata refresh rather than data update.

Provenance

Source

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Department of Commerce

Collection Method

Collected using a Mechanical Bathythermograph (MBT) instrument and processed by NODC.

Time Range

1964-05-07 to 1964-05-19

Freshness

2026-04-01 15:09:47.894689

Geography

North Pacific Ocean